Little Gale Gumbo (23 page)

Camille studied him while he served Josie another spoonful of rice. No, she decided. Benjamin wasn't like most men. She could search for days to see a glimmer of reckless anger in his soft brown eyes, but she'd never find it.

Still, one thing was certain: If Ben was serious about this café business, he'd have to learn to make a proper gumbo.

 

Their first class was conducted in Camille's kitchen on a damp September afternoon.

“The hardest part is the roux,” she said, standing beside Ben at the stove.

“The what?” Matthew asked, leaning over his father's shoulder.

“The roux,” Camille said again, whisking the mixture of butter and flour in a cast-iron pot. “The base of the gumbo. What helps give the gumbo its rich flavor. We Creoles like our roux lighter than the Cajuns do, but it really depends on the dish. Roux can be really light—
blond
, they call it—or as dark as bittersweet chocolate. The darkest are the hardest to make, but every roux requires the cook's undivided attention. They cook quickly and are easily ruined.”

“Like love,” Josie chimed in from her post on the other side of her mother. “That's what Momma's friend Miss Willa used to say. That a roux was a lot like love. Isn't that right, Momma?”

Camille glanced to Ben, blushing slightly. “Never mind all that, Josephine,” she said, biting back a smile. “All I know is that chatty cooks make for a burned roux.”

Josephine nodded dutifully. “Yes, ma'am.” She leaned toward Matthew and whispered, “I got my roux perfect the first time. Momma said even
she
didn't get it right her first time.”

“What about you, Dahlia?” asked Matthew, suspecting he already knew what her answer would be.

Dahlia sat behind them at the table, doodling on her notebook, her stack of schoolbooks beside her untouched. “What about me?”

“Dahlia hates to cook,” said Josie, as if Matthew were asking to find a suitable wife. “She hasn't the patience for cooking, or the imagination. Momma said so.”

“She did not,” said Dahlia.

“No, I certainly did not, Josephine,” Camille agreed. “I said Dahlia's talents lay elsewhere. It's not anyone who can grow roses with blossoms that big,” Camille said, nodding to the pair of overflowing pots on the windowsill. Camille winked at Dahlia; Dahlia smiled. “Now pay attention, gentlemen.”

When the roux was the color of peanut butter, Camille pointed to the counter and said, “Hand me that blue bowl, please, Josephine.”

Josie did, and Camille poured the contents into her pot, a mix of finely chopped vegetables.

“We call this the holy trinity in New Orleans cooking,” she explained, blending the diced pieces into the roux. “Equal parts onion, celery, and bell pepper. Next we add the stock. This is where the real flavor comes in.”

She gestured to the pot on the rear burner, the source of the heady scent that had been filling the house while it had simmered all morning, a blend of shrimp shells, lemon slices, parsley, thyme, and bay leaves.

“Strain that, will you please, Benjamin?”

Ben's turn to play sous-chef; he returned to her side a few moments later with the strained liquid and poured it slowly into the pot while she stirred, letting the mixture grow hot.

“So who taught you to make this?” asked Matthew.

“My momma,” Camille said. “But everybody's got their own gumbo recipe. You ask a dozen New Orleanians how to make gumbo and you'll get a dozen different recipes.” She pointed back to the pot. “Now we add the garlic, chopped tomatoes, and seasonings. Matthew.”

At Camille's direction, Matthew selected a variety of herbs, which she sprinkled over the mixture: thyme, basil, oregano, and bay leaves.

She pointed to the counter with her free hand. “The chopped okra, please, Benjamin.”

Ben delivered her the bowl and watched as she folded the green coins into the stew.

“Smells good, doesn't it?” asked Josie, watching Matthew closing in.

Camille turned down the flame. “Now we let this simmer for a while, so the okra has a chance to break down and thicken the gumbo.”

“So when do we add the shrimp?” asked Matthew.

“At the very end,” said Camille. “You don't want to overcook them.”

Ben leaned in for a whiff. Camille smiled at him, their shoulders touching.

“And there you have it,” she said, setting the lid on her pot. “Gumbo.” She wiped her hands on the skirt of her apron. “Tomorrow we'll work on étouffée and pralines. You can't call yourself a partner in a Creole café and not know how to make a praline, Benjamin Haskell.”

Ben nodded, smiled. “No, I suppose I can't.”

While Dahlia scrawled on the edge of her notebook and Josie scooped handfuls of onion skins and celery ends into the trash, Matthew watched his father and Camille at the stove, transfixed by the unspoken affection that passed between them in the sweet-smelling room. Most of all he watched his father's spreading smile, Ben's eyes glossy with a determined devotion that Matthew made up his mind in that instant to inherit, whether he realized it or not.

 

A week later, Ben leased the empty storefront three blocks down from the police station where Harry Martin's diner had lived for almost twenty years, getting nearly all of the fixtures and appliances and even the old man's jukebox in the deal. He and Matthew and Camille and the girls spent a blissfully mild weekend in early October coloring the exposed brick walls violet and mustard and painting fat-blossomed flowers on the floor. Camille took it upon herself to fill the jukebox with only jazz and blues, even as the girls pleaded for their favorite Fleetwood Mac and Carly Simon songs.

A few hours before opening on a crisp and bright Saturday morning, Ben hauled the ladder out onto the sidewalk and hung the sign he'd made in his woodshop above the door.

The Little Gale Gumbo Café was officially open for business.

 

No one came.

The five of them wandered through the café all morning, busying themselves with small chores, glancing up every time someone passed by the tall front window only to slow, peer in, and keep walking. When ten o'clock arrived and still no one had come in, Ben assured them that the lunch rush was imminent, but as the minutes ticked away on the clock above the counter, it seemed their great plan might be a miserable failure.

“This place sucks,” declared Dahlia, falling into a chair. “These people wouldn't know good food if it came up and bit them on the ass.”

“Dahlia,” Camille said gently, neatening a plate of pralines for the tenth time that hour.

“I can't believe it,” Josie wailed. “After we've worked so hard!”

“Oh, come on, everybody,” said Ben, patting Matthew on the back. “Cheer up. It's early.”

But it wasn't. The clock read three ten. They'd be closing in less than an hour. Then, just when they began to ferry plates of pralines and pots of gumbo back to the kitchen, the front door opened and in spilled half a dozen high school boys in sweatpants and sweatshirts, red cheeked and sweaty. Dahlia, Josie, and Matthew recognized them all, but it was the dark-haired one in front with the basketball wedged under his arm who captured Dahlia's attention.

Ben came around the counter, smiling. “Hi, Jack.”

“Hi, Mr. Haskell,” Jack Thurlow said to Ben, even as his eyes searched the restaurant. “We just finished a pickup game and we're starved.” When Jack found Dahlia behind the counter, his gaze settled. He waved. She waved back, her stomach dropping. She'd heard that he and Janet Miller had broken up that summer, and the news had thrilled her.

At the other end of the counter, Josie made kissing faces behind her tented hands. Dahlia flicked ice water at her.

“You boys are just in time.” Ben steered the posse toward the largest table and handed out menus. “We're having an opening-day special—buy one entrée, get five free.”

The team chuckled, taking their seats. “I'll be there in a sec, guys,” Jack said, turning to Dahlia. When she saw he meant to approach her, her hand rushed to her hair, a desperate attempt to tame the curls she had given up on hours earlier. She tugged on her apron, hoping the sweat stains under her armpits hadn't spread too badly.

Jack arrived at the counter.

“Hi.”

“Hi.”

He gestured to the clock on the wall. “Looks like we just made it.”

“Looks like y'all did,” she said, checking too, even though she knew exactly what time it was. “Good thing, too. Otherwise my sister and I would've had to eat three pots of gumbo each. Not to mention four pies.”

Jack chuckled. “Four, huh?”

“Four.” Dahlia grinned. “And don't even get me started on the tubs of shrimp Creole.”

Matthew came out of the kitchen, his eyes fixing on the new arrivals. Seeing Jack, he moved at once to the counter.

“Hey, Matt,” Jack said.

Matthew nodded, glancing pointedly at Dahlia. “Hey, Jack.”

“It looks great in here,” Jack said, glancing around. “I've been watching you guys get the place ready.” His eyes wandered back to Dahlia and stayed there. “I've been looking forward to coming in.”

Matthew looked between them. “Your mom needs help in the kitchen,” he said.

Dahlia gave him a dubious stare.

“I'll go,” offered Josie, slipping behind Dahlia and disappearing into the kitchen.

“Matthew,” Ben called from the table, “let's get these boys some food, son.”

Matthew marched out to the floor. Dahlia and Jack shared a nervous smile.

“Here.” He withdrew a small package from his pocket and held it out to her. “It's for your mother. Sort of a congratulations gift. Handmade soap from my mom. She said your mother was always really helpful to her at the Laundromat.”

“Thanks.” Dahlia took the package. “Does your mom like pralines?”

“I'm not sure. What did you call them—praw-what?”

“Pralines.”

“Pralines,” he repeated, smiling. “Got it.”

“Stay here,” she ordered. “I'll be right back.”

Dahlia could feel Jack's eyes on her as she walked down the counter and fumbled to slide a half dozen pralines into a paper bag, cursing helplessly when she dropped two, catching them in her apron. When she came back with the folded brown bag, Jack pulled out his wallet, but Dahlia wouldn't hear of it.

“Then I guess I'll just have to come back,” he said.

She smiled. “I guess you will.”

For the next hour, the six young men inhaled bowls of gumbo and emptied baskets of crusty bread, ending their meals with fat slices of pecan pie topped with whipped cream before they tried to pay their bill, which Ben refused to give them.

They left at four fifteen, full and tired, promising to be back with their parents, their sisters, their brothers, and everyone else they knew.

Nineteen

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The basketball team made more than good on their vow. As quickly as gossip had spread about Camille's arrival, so did the news of her luscious food. Suddenly islanders who had once crossed the street to avoid her were now lining up at the café's counter for a steaming bowl of her signature stew.

Camille herself could hardly believe how quickly her business grew. Within weeks, she was serving nearly seventy bowls of gumbo a day, and selling pralines faster than she and Josie could make them.

It didn't hurt, of course, that it was Ben who greeted the customers and Ben who served them their meals. But sometimes, for fun, Camille would slip out from the kitchen just to watch customers take those first spoonfuls, their eyes closing, their cheeks and necks flushing, their fingers tensing around their spoon handles, and then the sounds, the rhythmic groans of rapture that came from their throats, so similar to another primal release that a person passing by might have looked twice at the sign above the door.

 

Just as he'd promised, Jack Thurlow returned to the café on a windy Saturday morning in November, when Louis Armstrong played on the jukebox and the restaurant was so full that the only free seat he could find was at Alma Cooley's corner table. The town manager's secretary looked up from her gumbo, her spoon suspended in disbelief.

“Good morning, Mrs. Cooley,” Jack said cheerfully, sitting down. “Don't mind me. This'll only take a second.”